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[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:

“Notice that it begins with Maxine
"feeling' the narrowing then we get the narrowing.
Is there ANYWHERE else in this novel Maxine waxes like that?”


I think so:

Yes, a longer passage, more diffuse, with more detail on how things
used to be, but it even has a “converge” - page 63, end of Chapter 5 -

“…Times Square, which for a few years now she has made a conscious
effort not to go near if she can help it. The sleazy old Deuce she
remembers from
her less responsible youth is so no more, Giuliani and his developer
friends and the forces of suburban righteousness have swept the place
Disneyfied and sterile—the melancholy
 bars, the cholesterol and fat dispensaries and porno theaters have
been torn down or renovated, the unkempt and unhoused and unspoken-for
have been pushed out, no more dope dealers, no more pimps or
three-card monte artists, not even kids playing hooky at the old
pinball arcades—all gone. Maxine can’t avoid feeling nauseous at the
possibility of some stupefied consensus about what life is to be,
taking over this whole city
 without mercy, a tightening Noose of Horror, multiplexes and malls
and big-box stores it only makes sense to shop at if you have a car
and a driveway and a garage next  to a house out in the burbs. Aaahh!
They have landed, they are among us, and it helps them no end that the
mayor, with roots in the outer boroughs
            and beyond, is one of them.

         			And here they all are tonight, *converged* [my stars] into
this born-again imitation of their own
      American heartland, here in the bad Big Apple”